TiVo takes on Cisco in patent knock down

Cisco's woes in consumer-land have taken a new twist, with TiVo alleging the networking giant's DVR set-top boxes, supplied to telcos, infringe TiVo’s patents.

The complaint filed last Monday in a Texas Federal Court claims that the Cisco boxes infringe on patents that make the playback of time-shifted TV possible.

TiVo also claims that Cisco has had full knowledge of at least three of its disputed patents since 2010 following the vendor’s involvement in TiVo’s prior and separate case against AT&T.

In late May, Cisco filed a pre-emptive strike against TiVo stating that during licensing discussions TiVo had indicated that it did not want to broadly license TiVo technology to Cisco as it would interfere with its ability to assert its patents in separate suits against Cisco’s customers.

TiVo has been embroiled in various patent disputes for over seven years of litigation to get compensation for its IP and is currently in the throes of litigation with Motorola and pending a court tussle with Verizon.

In its most recent guidance, TiVo anticipates that its net loss will blow out by US$30m in the current quarter due to “substantial sequential percentage increases” in litigation costs and higher marketing spend. ®